


and we'll ask if we can stay

by Eddaic



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama, Fluff, Ginzura - Freeform, Humor, M/M, Slash, all the fluff and sappy stuff, so amazingly self-indulgent, they bicker a lot and are so hopeless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: Gintoki supposed he was unlucky, if he thought about it really hard.





	

Warnings for profanity.

**and we'll ask if we can stay**

Gintoki supposed he was unlucky, if he thought about it really hard. He didn't have parents and he lived in a studio apartment that Takasugi scoffed at and he sat next to a weird boy with a ponytail in class. The whole apartment and orphan things he could deal with – Shouyou was the _best_ guy in the world, and made the greatest stir fry, and the apartment was kinda cosy and had soothing pale-green wallpaper and a black-cat clock that ticked away opposite the bed.

The boy, though...the boy was such an oddball that Gintoki suspected he had fallen on his head as a baby.  Katsura – that was his name – was always top of the class ("What a swot," Gintoki thought to himself, flipping him the bird from beneath the desk) but somehow had a difficult time putting two-and-two together for the most basic of things. For one, he didn't get that you can't lecture ducks about ethics – when they went on trips to the lake some two miles away, Katsura would hunker down, toss the ducks bits of bread, and talk about the Buddha. He'd even coo and clap his hands if a duck quacked in 'response', the idiot. Sitting next to him, Gintoki feared that he would one day be irrevocably infected by whatever had scrambled Katsura's brains.

So during Mathematics (Gintoki's most hated subject – now he had a reason to feel destructive), Gintoki discreetly slipped his hand behind Katsura, who was engrossed in taking notes in his neat, almost print-like handwriting, and gave his ponytail a sharp yank. Katsura yelped and jumped a foot in the air, knocking his chair over with a crash and a clatter.

 _Your luck_ , thought Gintoki, as all eyes turned to stare at Katsura, who was turning red to the tips of his ears. A few sniggers rang out.

"Is something the matter?" asked the teacher, half-sarcastically, peering at Katsura through her round tortoiseshell spectacles.

Katsura may have been a lot of things, but Gintoki knew he wasn't a rat. True to his character, Katsura shook his head, stammered, "N - no, Ma'am," and quickly righted his chair and sat down, trying to make himself as small as possible. It was enough to make Gintoki feel for him a little. Not feel _sorry_ for him, of course. Just feel for him. A totally miniscule amount, really.

Later during break time Gintoki tripped Katsura so he fell flat on his face in the damp grass, and then told him to eat with him. Katsura sat meekly beside him on a fallen log some distance away from the swings, and silently dug into his onigiri. Occasionally he wiped a grain of rice off his chin. Gintoki tore through his cucumber sandwich, glowering at the boy all the while and growing more and more irked by the second. Katsura wasn't _saying_ anything. Gintoki had expected him to be grateful that he wanted to eat with him, and maybe talk about...about whatever Katsura wanted to talk about, even though it would inevitably be freakish.

Eventually his tolerance snapped and he said, "Why aren't you talking? I asked you to sit with me."

Katsura blinked at him, his mouth bulging with rice. He quickly swallowed. "So?"

"Whaddya mean 'so'? Someone asks you to eat with them, you talk. Not sit there like all tense like you're in heat."

Katsura spoke in that serene, dreamy tone of his, like he had one foot in another world. "You didn't talk, either."

Which. Okay, that was true, but it didn't make Katsura any less irritating. Gintoki delivered a swift kick to his shin – not very hard, but hard enough to scrape off some skin.

" _Ow_ ," said Katsura, his brow furrowing. He got up, looking angry, or as angry as he could look, which was more like deeply exasperated. Dappled sunlight played on his soft-featured face, and Gintoki found himself arbitrarily thinking, at the back of his mind, _he's pretty_. "I'm never eating with you again. You're mean."

Even though it was just bizarre, unpopular Katsura talking, the accusation stung. It wasn't as if Gintoki had a lot of friends – but he certainly had admirers for his kendo skills, and he and Takasugi talked sometimes. Well. They squabbled and pulled each other's hair, but they still talked. And they _always_ sparred during kendo lessons. Feigning nonchalance, Gintoki scoffed and stuck his pinky into his nostril. "Yeah? I didn't like eating with you, anyway. You're a weirdo. No wonder no one likes you."

Katsura huffed, scowling, and Gintoki could swear he saw tears well in his eyes. His hands balled into fists. "I was willing to think you were nice, but you're just a _jerk_ , a big _bully_ , like Takasugi always says you are." Before Gintoki could respond, he turned on his heel and scuttled away, huddling his tiffin close to his chest as if it were a golden egg he was guarding, his shoulders hunched.

***

Gintoki returned home in a vile mood, dumping his bag on the floor (like Shouyou had instructed him _not_ to do) and flopping on the bed with his dirt-caked shoes still on. He grabbed his copy of _JUMP_ from the bedside table and ferociously flipped through the pages, trying to find something that would hold his attention. Nothing was even remotely interesting, not even the stylish, Gothic _C.Clay-man_. Growling, he flung the copy away and lay on his back, covering his eyes with his arm.

Shouyou got back around four-thirty, took one look at all the chores that had not been done, and pinned Gintoki with one of his not-angry-just-disappointed expressions. "Did something happen at school today?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Gintoki rolled over and mumbled something not entirely suited to polite society into his pillow. It was muffled, but he knew Shouyou guessed the gist of it, anyway. After a moment Shouyou said, "You mustn’t use bad words, Gintoki." A pause. "Was it the Maths teacher?"

"No."

"Takasugi-kun?"

" _No_."

"Got a bad result on a test?"

"Since when have I _cared_ about that?"

"Ah, that's true," Shouyou said in his usual serene manner, which made Gintoki even angrier. He covered his head with his pillow and waited for Shouyou to go away.

But by the evening Gintoki's bristling annoyance had mellowed into sullen guilt. Shouyou made stir-fry and Gintoki ate it slowly, occasionally playing with his food, not really tasting it; his words to Katsura replayed in his head like a broken record. His eyes stung, which was stupid, because only assholes sat around feeling sorry for themselves after being jerks – Shouyou always said that decent people just apologised and did something to make up for their actions.

A tear dripped down his cheek.

"Gintoki?" said Shouyou, looking alarmed, his pale eyes filled with concern.

By now Gintoki was silently crying into his vegetables. He wiped his face fiercely, but the tears didn't stop no matter how hard he willed them to. Shouyou did not say anything till Gintoki managed to dignify himself somewhat. "Did you fight with someone?" he asked gently.

Gintoki remained still. Somehow Shouyou always _knew_.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Gintoki forced himself to shake his head. Shouyou dropped it and served store-bought strawberry pudding for dessert, and Gintoki went to bed with a restless mind.

***

The next day he picked a bunch of tall daisies from the school grounds, wrapped them with a red string (he didn't know how to make a bow, so he tied the knot as neatly as he could), and thrust them at Katsura during lunch. "Sorry," he mumbled, staring at his unpolished shoes. He didn't dare look up at Katsura, who was sitting on a rusty bench and halfway through his food. After a painfully long moment during which Gintoki wondered if he should have picked dandelions instead, Katsura said, "It's okay." He fingered the daisies, his gaze politely curious, but didn't take them. "Thanks."

Gintoki held Katsura's wrist, put the flowers in his hand, and then turned round and began to walk rapidly towards the school building, wishing he could disappear. Katsura called, "Wait, Gintoki!" and Gintoki skidded to a halt and turned back, his face hot enough to fry a pancake. Katsura patted the bench and said with a smile, "Sit with me."

They ate together, and Gintoki's embarrassment quickly wore off, as it was wont to. Katsura talked about the ducks at the pond and how pretty the river looked at night and the bougainvillea that his grandmother trimmed at their flat. "Do you think the ducks are cute?" asked Katsura.

"Hell no," said Gintoki. "They're ugly and loud and their poop is green."

"That's so mean," returned Katsura with surprising earnestness. " _I_ think they're cute. I have ducks on my shower curtains and duck socks."

"You are so _weird_ ," said Gintoki, but he was laughing. Then he paused. "Does Takasugi _really_ call me a jerk?"

"Ah," Katsura said, rubbing the back of his neck, "yeah, but, you know. He says bad stuff about everyone. He's nice. Really. He stopped some guys from bullying me once. Twice. And I think he likes you because he also says that you're really strong and a great fighter and the school would be boring without you – "

" _I get it_ , shut up."

They sat together for both break and lunch the next day, and the next, and the next. Eventually they stopped inviting each other and just wordlessly plumped down together, the rest of the school as irrelevant to them as flies. Sometimes Takasugi joined them, usually at Katsura's request. Gintoki was always reluctant to let him, because that would mean not being able to have Katsura all to himself, but it was fun with three of them, so he let it be.

Then with dawning horror he realised, even though he had known it, that he liked Katsura better than anyone at school.

***

Out of some outdated sense of stoicism, Zura refused to cry. Gintoki knew that they were both twelve –  _big_ boys now, nothing like the snot-nosed brats they were at eight or nine or ten – but Zura was being ridiculous. His right ankle was pink and warm and swollen to the size of a tennis ball. Gintoki was willing to bet he'd broken it; there _had_ been a rather loud 'pop' when the stupid wig tripped over a tree root. And since it had been Zura's idea to jump the fence and go for a stroll in the woods by the school during lunch, Gintoki was inclined to not feel that sorry for him.

"Stop pretending it doesn't hurt."

"It _doesn't_ , that much," said Zura through gritted teeth, still balancing precariously on one leg. His brow was dotted with sweat.

Gintoki put his hands on his hips. "You're an idiot."

" _You're_ an idiot!"

"Idiot, idiot, idiot. Get on my back."

After yet more arguing and cajoling and a solemn promise to never mention it to anyone, ever, Zura reluctantly clambered into Gintoki's back. Gintoki held Zura's knees close to his waist and began to trudge back to the school. At length Zura began to breathe hard, and Gintoki knew he was in a shit-ton of pain. Zura could be so amazingly bull-headed. The teachers had no idea what they were talking about when they wrote things like 'soft-spoken' and 'shy' and 'needs to assert himself more' in Zura's report card.

He didn't know why he put up with him, really.

Later, when they sat in the infirmary after a lengthy talking-to from their homeroom teacher, a subdued Zura clasped Gintoki's hand, averted his gaze, and mumbled hopefully, "Are you gonna stay till Grandma gets here?"

"You're a baby," said Gintoki, and dragged up a plastic chair.

***

The chalk struck his brow sharply, and when he raised his head, groggy from sleep, the duster missed him by an inch. For a second he wondered why the hell they were both still in class when the light slanting through the windows indicated it was evening, and then he remembered it was their turn to clean.

"Get a job!" Zura shouted from beside the blackboard, where he was mopping the floor. "Or a girlfriend! Both would sort you right out, you lazy, good-for-nothing slacker."

If there was one thing Zura did better than studying, it was annoying Gintoki to the brink of homicide. Didn't he have better stuff to do than tell Gintoki how to live his life? A healthy sixteen-year-old boy should have been playing baseball and skipping class and talking about girls and tricking people into buying him ice cream. Zura didn't even _eat_ ice cream.

Gintoki scratched his ear, stretched, and gave a cavernous yawn. "Don't need a job. We get by."

" _Shouyou-sensei_ gets by. You just leech off him."

"And what would I do with a girlfriend? Ah, you're prettier than any girl, anyway, Zura. Just hop on my lap, nice and giggly, and – "

The second duster pegged him right in the nose, and above his groans of pain he heard an indignant, "It's _Katsura_ , you got that?"

***

Honestly, what were the _odds_ of them ending up in the same university?

Well. Fairly high, actually, considering they always spent their weekends together and Shouyou openly considered 'Kotarou-kun' a second son and Zura's grey, wrinkled grandma had gone for karaoke night with Gintoki more than a few times (she had a darn good voice, too).

Hagi University wasn't a _great_ school, and it wasn't their only option – Zura had been accepted into Tokyo University and Stanford, and Gintoki into a few colleges out in the country – but it was good enough, and neither of them wanted to leave Yamaguchi Prefecture, though both wanted out of their guardians' homes. Gintoki majored in History, and Zura in Veterinary Sciences (honestly, what a _Zura_ thing to do). They were roommates, which meant disagreements were as normal as eating. Zura had actually drawn a line with chalk down the middle of the room so Gintoki's mess didn't tumble onto 'his' side. Sometimes Gintoki would toe a smelly old sock or a used pair of boxers an inch over the line, smirking and looking an infuriated Zura in the eye the whole time.

Life went on, and it was boring and mundane, and Gintoki began to think of ways it could be even _more_ boring and mundane, glancing at Zura half-accusingly, half-wistfully. Each time the thought flared up in his mind he battered it down, insisting to himself, _not yet_.

One evening in their third year, around Christmas, Zura wheeled round in his chair, looking serious, and Gintoki steeled himself for the looming lecture. "You can't expect to get a good job if you don't work at getting good grades, Gintoki."

"Nag, nag, nag!" said Gintoki, scratching his head. "Why don't you focus on your own studies instead of telling me what to do?"

"I _do_ focus on my studies!" returned Zura, affronted. "My problem is – "

"No, it's _not_ your problem."

"Gintoki," said Zura pleadingly, and _damn_ him for having those big, honey-brown eyes. Gintoki sighed and got up, walking over to Zura so he didn't have to speak loudly and get him all agitated. "I know you think my life will be over if I don't get a great result," he said, "but that's not true. Being some respected and respectable hotshot isn't my style. By all means, come out top of the class, become a well-known vet...but I'll do things my way. Okay?"

Zura was silent for a while. Gintoki knew he'd gotten through to him. He also knew Zura would keep arguing (albeit in a more tepid manner), because it was _Zura_ , for God's sake.

At length Zura sighed, picked up his pencil, and began to scribble absently in his notebook. "I know we're different, Gintoki," he said softly, "but this isn't a smart move. Why take a risk? I don't want to see you struggling to get by. It's not like being a vet pays much, but it will be better than doing odd jobs and such, and – "

He droned on, and Gintoki found himself drawn to his lips, full and chapped, and to the anxious little furrow in his brow, and to the stray lock of hair beside his cheek. Gintoki reached out, tucking the strand behind Zura's ear, and Zura abruptly stopped talking, like a man skidding to a halt after a sprint. They looked at each other for a time, stiff and silent with pursed mouths.

Then Zura turned back to his desk and flipped open a textbook, and Gintoki left the room in a daze, deciding he could use a walk. He nabbed Sakamoto along the way, and found some comfort in his incessant chatter and deep belly laugh.

***

They stood on the bridge and watched the sunset gild the town in gold. Zura still had his graduation hat, and he fiddled with it, turning it over in his hands. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, his lashes pale with the light. He'd finished top of the class, as everyone expected. Sakamoto had done well, too, and so had Takasugi in Tokyo – he wanted to pursue a master's in Chinese classics. Gintoki had passed, which was more than he could have expected with the way he skipped seminars and slept through lectures. He and Zura were to have dinner with Shouyou and Zura's grandmother later on. Shouyou's treat – he'd insisted.

Gintoki glanced at Zura's hand, wishing he could twine their fingers together. He wanted to walk with Zura, and eat dinner with him at cheap stalls, and watch silly movies with him every night. He wanted to say, "So what are you gonna do now?" but what came out from around the foot in his mouth was, "Live with me."

"And look at your mess all day?" murmured Zura, not removing his gaze from the sky. "Try to make you get off your ass to work? Eat your awful food, which a ten-year-old could prepare better? What sort of imbecile would agree to that?"

They moved into a little half-furnished apartment at the edges of Hagi. Zura wanted muted, classy decor, and Gintoki didn't care either way, so he went shopping with Zura. They bought some plum pillows for the couches, and a couple of rugs, and masses of toilet paper and soap and detergent so they wouldn't run out any time soon. Gintoki got a black-cat clock, which he hung opposite the bed, and put a framed photograph of him and Shouyou on the bedside table.

Things were as Gintoki had expected. He was no less of a slob and Zura no less of a mother hen. They bickered over what to have for breakfast and dinner, and over which TV shows to watch. Occasionally Zura would pick up Gintoki's clothes, strewn over the floor, grumbling to himself all the while. Zura earned the majority of the money and so paid the majority of the rent, and Gintoki would buy him random things as thanks: a packet of tea, a t-shirt, a novel. Sometimes they yelled at each other, and brought up fights from a decade ago, and said they wished they didn't live with someone so lazy or uptight or what-have-you. 

It was a late afternoon about a year after they'd moved in, and they had been lazing around, and Zura didn't seem surprised when Gintoki leaned over and kissed him, pressing him down into the couch. It was the height of summer, humid and uncomfortable, and they didn't have air conditioning, but Gintoki didn't mind. He brushed coils of damp, soot-black hair away from Zura's throat and planted languid kisses there, tasting the salt of his sweat.

Zura gently pulled him up and pressed their mouths together.

At length they broke off, their lips still brushing. Gintoki said, "Stay with me."

"You're a pain," returned Zura, drawing lazy spirals on Gintoki's shoulder with his finger.

"I make a decent eggs-on-rice."

"It's the only thing you make half well."

"I can lift heavy furniture."

"So can I."

"I don't blast loud music."

"Basic decency."

"I love you."

Zura pushed his hands through Gintoki's curls and kissed him again.

It didn't feel like some great cosmic moment out of a poem. It was the utter normalcy, the 'well, why wouldn't I?' of it that struck Gintoki. He looked at Zura, at the curve of his lips, the light in his eyes, and felt what he had always felt, except now he could put a name to it.

He supposed he was lucky – he didn't have to think really hard about it.

_-finis-  
_

**Author's Note:**

> To the best of my knowledge, there is no such school as Hagi University. I didn't want to name a real university because it would be kind of insulting to say it's 'not a great school'. Other than that, I humbly beg that you pardon my bastardisation of Hagi in general.
> 
> Title taken from 'Higher' by Creed, though the fic wasn't written to any song.
> 
> Have a good day. :)


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